


let the wonder never fade (but learn to let things go)

by PrinceDrew



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe, Angst, Au where Zoe is nine years younger than Connor, Bittersweet Ending, Bonding, Complicated Relationships, Daisy chains, Evan's still a liar but hey life can't be perfect, Fluff and Angst, Funeral, Gen, Grief, Hopeful Ending, Mourning, Sort Of, Zoe Murphy Deserves Happiness, vague venting? in my fic? it's more likely than you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 19:37:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14315721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceDrew/pseuds/PrinceDrew
Summary: It was only when Mrs Murphy came up to the door, smiling and pulling the girl close to her that Evan realised that no, he didn’t have the wrong house, and that this was Connor’s little sister.Connor Murphy’s little sister.Connor Murphy’s eight year old little sister called Zoe, who took one look at Evan and broke down into tears and glares, then clung to her mom’s side, even once they were all sat down at the Murphy’s dining room table.





	let the wonder never fade (but learn to let things go)

**Author's Note:**

> Title (roughly) taken from Laura Shigihara's [Wish My Life Away](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F0-q1jeReY).
> 
> As always, heed the tags and decide for yourself if you should read this. Take care of yourself.

It could have been worse.

It could have been a lot, lot worse, and Evan had to keep telling himself that otherwise he’d think it went as bad as it could have been, and the way things actually went was pretty bad as it was. Mostly because when he had knocked on the door and waited, he wasn’t greeted by Mrs Murphy like he was expecting.

It was a girl, her face all red and puffy like she had been crying, and for a moment, Evan thought he had the wrong house, even though he had been repeating the address all day in his head.

And it was only when Mrs Murphy came up to the door, smiling and pulling the girl close to her that Evan realised that no, he didn’t have the wrong house, and that this was Connor’s little sister.

Connor Murphy’s little sister.

Connor Murphy’s eight year old little sister called Zoe, who took one look at Evan and broke down into tears and glares, then clung to her mom’s side, even once they were all sat down at the Murphy’s dining room table.

And it wasn’t as though Evan could act surprised at this because as far as they knew, Evan and Connor were friends, and he was pretty sure that friends were meant to know the amount of siblings the other had, so he couldn’t even say ‘Oh, Connor never mentioned you’ or anything along those lines, because that would probably make her cry harder, and if she was an eight year old who grew up with Connor, she knew a lot more swears than eight year olds were supposed to know, and grief did weird things to people, so she’d probably use them while yelling at Evan and -

The entire thing was just. Awkward.

She was, Evan supposed, an entirely average eight year old, in her Big Hero 6 t-shirt and jeans, her hair in two plaits, and she kept pulling a jacket Evan recognised as the one Connor wore tight around herself, like it was some sort of blanket.

“Why is he here?” she asked, but she mumbled it, her voice a little croaky, pressing her face into her mom’s side.

“He was Connor’s friend, sweetie,” she explained, smoothing down Zoe’s hair. “We just thought he might like to talk about him to us, that’s all.”

“Connor never mentioned him,” Zoe replied, but she left it at that, choosing instead to hide rather than interrogate Evan further.

They let him stumble through some story about him and Connor, the day he broke his arm, some tale about how he fell from the tree but it was all okay, it was all alright, Connor was there, he helped Evan to the hospital, he was all there, everything was fine.

Everything wasn’t fine, but that didn’t mean pretending otherwise was bad.

Midway through the story - when Mr Murphy had reached over to grasp Mrs Murphy’s hand but before she had started to cry - Zoe stopped hiding, peering out at Evan, before she slipped away, out of the living, just as he was finishing the story. When she came back, she was carrying a pile of sharpies in her arms, Connor’s jacket almost drowning her.

“I want to sign your cast,” she said, her voice soft, like she didn’t want to upset her mom, dumping the pile of sharpies onto the table and sitting on the chair next to him.

“Oh,” Evan said. “You, uh, you don’t have to -”

“I want to,” Zoe said, already picking up a purple sharpie. “Arm, please.”

Surprised, Evan held it out for her. There wasn’t space for her to put her name anywhere near Connor’s, so she did it on the opposite side, writing her name almost as large as Connor had. She filled the rest of the space on his cast with multicoloured stars, eying up each colour carefully as though the wrong one would ruin her work completely. Then she drew a ring around the ‘O’ in her name, followed by a wonky Baymax face by the ‘E’. She stuck her tongue out in concentration, which was something Evan didn’t think people actually did.

And she coloured the stars in as well. Even though she didn’t have to.

“I’m done,” she announced after a while, sitting back and smiling up at Evan, proud of her masterpiece. “Do you like it?”

Evan would be the first to admit that kids sparked at least a little primal fear within him. But he knew that everything seemed ten times bigger than they were at her age, and she was already dealing with some pretty big things, so he smiled at her, because she was little, and seemed nice.

“I love it,” he said, and she smiled even brighter at him. “Can you talk me through it?”

“It’s meant to be Saturn,” she explained, pointing at the ‘O’. “Because it’s the best planet. And that’s Baymax, because he’ll make your arm better faster.”

“Thank you,” Evan said. “You’re a very good artist, you know.”

Zoe didn’t say anything, but she smiled even brighter, if that was possible.

There wasn’t much else that could be done, so Evan mumbled something about having to leave. Mrs. Murphy nodded at that, wiping at her face as though it wasn’t already covered in tears, and stood up.

“I’ll see you out,” she said. “Zoe, don’t forget to put those away.”

“I won’t,” she replied as Mrs Murphy and Evan left the room, then she started saying something to her dad that Evan didn’t quite catch.

They kept quiet in the hallway as Evan pulled on his shoes, but Mrs Murphy kept hovering, like she wanted to give him a hug or something but wasn’t sure if she could.

“It was very nice of you to come over, Evan,” she said at last as he stepped outside. “Do you want a lift home?”

“I’m, uh, I’m sure,” Evan mumbled. “Thank you for, ah, for having me though.”

“It’s no problem,” she replied, and then her smile faded a little, and she glanced back inside, before turning to Evan.

“Zoe’s… she’s not taken the whole thing well,” she explained, her voice a low hush, though Evan doubted anyone else could hear them. “Today was the first time she’s really smiled since, well. Since Connor left. So I’m glad you were able to help her.”

Evan’s insides twisted around into that tight, not-good feeling he had grown too used to but never comfortable with, and he just nodded, praying Mrs Murphy wouldn’t say anything else.

“Oh!” she said, before turning around and grabbing something off the hallway table. It was an invitation, cream, backed and bordered with black. A funeral invitation, Evan realised vaguely as he accepted it, his hands shaking again.

“His funeral is next week,” she said, smiling like she couldn’t bear to do anything else. “I’m sure… I’m sure you’ll want to say goodbye.”

He glanced down at the invitation.

_‘Join us we celebrate the life of Connor Lawrence Murphy,’_ it read, with his date of birth and death printed underneath, then the date of the funeral. It was at the local crematorium, a reception held afterwards at the local hotel’s function room. Light refreshments provided.

_‘In lieu of flowers, please donate to National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.’_

The Murphy’s had put that into the newspaper announcement. It had been included in the email the school had sent around as well.

“I, um. I don’t think I can make it,” he said, hoping she didn’t ask why, trying hard to ignore how his stomach twisted itself at the sight of her face falling. “But I can - the reception? I can, uh, I can make the reception.”

“Of course,” Mrs Murphy said, smiling, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course.”

And then, because he felt Bad with a capital B, he said, “If you, uh, if you need a b-babysitter, for, ah, for Zoe, I’ll be happy to help?”

Her smile seemed a bit more real then. “That sounds wonderful, dear.”

She gave him her phone number, and he gave her his, and then he left.

Sleep didn’t come easy that night.

He kept closing his eyes and seeing Zoe Murphy in her plaits beaming up while wearing her dead brother’s jacket, and when he opened them, he kept imagining Connor Murphy, stood or sat at the foot of his bed, watching him, just watching him.

“You look like shit,” Jared cheerfully informed Evan the next day at school.

“Thanks.”

“Also,” Jared added, pointing at Evan’s cast. “Whose Zoe and why does it look like she’s eight?”

“Connor’s sister,” Evan mumbled, suddenly wishing for a jacket or something to tug down over the cast. It hadn’t occurred to him how bright the colours were. “She - she signed it. L-last, uh, last night. When I went over.”

There was a pause.

“Connor Murphy has a sister?”

Evan nodded. He wasn’t really looking at Jared.

“Dude. That’s fucked up.”

Evan agreed, though he didn’t really know what to. 

The week separating Evan from Connor’s funeral shrunk far too quickly. He didn’t tell anyone else about Zoe - there wasn’t anyone else to tell, aside from maybe his mom, but he couldn’t do that. It would be weird if he did that. Before he knew it, the day had arrived.

He didn’t have the right sort of jacket or tie for a funeral, even if he was only going to the reception, so he borrowed them from Jared, even though the jacket didn’t fit perfectly, and Jared had to do the tie for him.

“Why are you even bothering?” Jared asked as he watched Evan get ready. “I mean, it’s Connor Murphy’s funeral.”

“Reception,” Evan muttered, smoothing out his shirt. It had been hard to get the jacket over the cast. Jared had to tug it down for him. “I’m only going to the reception.”

Connor was probably already buried by now.

He tried hard not to think about that.

“That’s even weirder,” Jared said. “Who goes to a reception but not the actual funeral?”

Evan shrugged. “I’m going for Zoe.”

“And that’s the cherry on top of this weird-ass sundae,” Jared said. “She’s, like, eight right? Why are you even bothering with her?”

“I just feel bad for her,” Evan replied. “She’s just a little kid.”

Jared sort of squinted at him then, but he left it at that. He didn’t say anything even when he dropped Evan off at the hotel, though Evan was pretty sure he overheard him mutter something along the lines of ‘it’s your funeral’.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Jared said. “Or whenever. Just text me when you want picking up?”

When Evan entered the function room, he found it was only barely half full at best. Full of people he couldn’t come close to recognising, all in suits and black dresses, one baby in white - were babies meant to wear white to funerals? - and it slowly dawned on him oh, he didn’t have anyone to anchor onto, and there wouldn’t be anyone he could anchor onto because he was a stranger, a stranger at a dead kid’s funeral reception and oh there came the sweaty palms and the dry choking throat and the anxiety tearing his insides apart which -

Not good.

He should have just. Refused to come all together.

He was the only person there that could be considered close to Connor’s age. That thought only served to unnerve him further.

Mr Murphy found Evan almost immediately. He gave a weak, polite but strained smile, looking ten years than he had the week before, his suit perfect yet crumpled.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, giving Evan a rough one arm hug crossed with a shoulder squeeze. “It’s good that - it’s good that you did.”

His hair was all messed up, like he kept running his hands through it.

“There’s food around if you want it,” he said, casting his gaze across the room. “God knows Cynthia isn’t eating any of it… Zoe should be around here.”

Evan nodded and mumbled his thanks, scanning the room until he spotted Zoe, who was small and curled up in the corner, looking miserable as someone who looked like her aunt talked to her. Her hair was in plaits in again, and she kept picking at the hem of her black dress, or smoothing down the collar, biting her lip all the way. He made his way over to her, mumbling apologies to whoever stood vaguely close to him, trying to kick down the anxiety bubbling up inside.

“Uh, hey Zoe,” he said as soon as he got close, and she looked immediately and -

Well, she didn’t quite smile. But she looked relieved.

The woman who was talking to her stopped in the middle of her sentence, turning and frowning at Evan. She looked a little like Cynthia, so she had to be Zoe’s aunt. 

“And you are?” she asked.

“He’s Evan,” Zoe said, and she was standing up from the chair, taking Evan’s hand, looking up at him, smiling a little, but her face was pale. “He was Connor’s friend. And mine.”

Was it just a Murphy thing that signing casts made you friends?

She was tugging at his arm. “Can we go somewhere else?” she asked him, and she kept blinking as well, too many times to be natural.

“Sure,” Evan told her, squeezing her hand. He remembered how the teachers back in elementary school would do that whenever he was line leader, and how it seemed like something secret, safe and secure, at least until he figured out they did it to every kid.

Still. Zoe probably needed that comfort.

“Let’s - ah, let’s tell your mom first, okay?”

They found Mrs Murphy, sat in the corner with Mr Murphy, her gaze distant, but she still smiled when she saw Evan and Zoe, and told them not to take too long, Evan had her number, right? Oh, and it was lovely to see him. It was lovely that he made it.

Evan tried very hard to ignore the fact he could hear her say “For God’s sake Larry, I’m fine, I’m just not hungry, quit pestering me,” as he and Zoe left.

The back of the hotel opened up into a garden, all green grass and hedges and flowers still holding before autumn took over completely, so that’s where he took her. She didn’t let go of his hand until they were outside, but even then she kept close to him.

“I have to see the school counsellor tomorrow,” Zoe said, kneeling down to pick some daisies. “Miss Chen. Apparently she keeps candy on her desk.”

Miss Chen. Evan could remember her, because he had to see her after his dad left for a ‘check-in’. She had been nice, a bit too smiley and keen, but nice. Happy. There had been a jar of gumballs on her desk, and she even offered him a lollipop once their session was over.

“I, uh, I remember her,” he said, kneeling sitting down besides Zoe. “She’ll let you d-draw or read if you ask her, I think. It was - it was a long time ago.”

“Yeah,” Zoe said, nodding. She was stringing the daisies together now, her eyes never straying from the flowers.

They were quiet for a moment. Zoe was humming under her breath.

“So you - you, uhm, you said Saturn was the best planet, right?” Evan said.

She looked up then, smiling now, only a little, but actually smiling, like she had been when she signed Evan’s cast. 

“It is,” she said. “It’s the best planet and no one can convince me otherwise. It has over fifty moons!”

“You know,” Evan began, and there was already that bad feeling in stomach, the one that came whenever he spoke about him. “C-Connor said you knew a lot about sp-space.” 

Zoe’s head ducked down almost immediately, her gaze returned to the daisies in her hand.

“He brought me a lot of books on it,” she half-whispered, voice cautious and trembling and a little bit rocky. “He - he said if I was really smart and studied a lot, I could go to Saturn myself one day, but you can’t stand on Saturn…”

She trailed off, and plucked another daisy from the ground. A part of Evan wished he had just stayed home.

“Mom’s not eaten a lot these past few days,” Zoe said suddenly, looking at Evan, her eyes bright and blink-blink- _blinking_. “It’s weird, because I’ve ate and ate and ate and I still don’t feel full, but…” She paused, and shrugged, biting her lips. “Is it weird?”

The daisy chain in her hands was long now - longer than Evan’s forearm, at least, and she just kept adding to it.

“G-Grief does - grief makes th-thing, uh, a little weird,” Evan said. “F-For a while, at least. Things will settle down.”

Zoe just nodded. Another daisy was added to the chain.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked. “I’ve not told anyone this, not even Natalie, and she’s my best friend.”

“Of course you can,” Evan said, and Zoe just.

Just looked at him, suddenly seeming a lot smaller than she was.

“I didn’t like Connor a lot of the time,” she whispered, and she was shaking, dropping the daisy chain and pulling her knees up to her chest, resting her head on her knees. “Like, sometimes, he was really fun! And nice! He took me to this rundown orchard place and he taught me how to climb a tree but… he was always promising he’d do things, and then he wouldn’t. Like he promised me he’d take me to Natalie’s house one day but he didn’t and she got mad at me even though it wasn’t my fault. And he yelled a lot too. Even when it made me cry, he’d yell, and sometimes he’d say sorry but not always. So I didn’t like him sometimes, even though sometimes he was the best?”

And she was crying.

This little girl, this little kid, who barely knew Evan but called him her friend, was crying, because her brother was dead, but she didn’t always like her brother, but she still was crying, oh god, she was _crying_ what the fuck do you do when a kid is crying - 

“Uh, hey, uh, no, uh - c-come here,” Evan said, opening his arms, and she almost barrelled into him, arms wrapping tight his chest, sobbing into his chest, and he just hugged her back.

Then he sort of. Patted her on the back and told her it was all okay and waited for her to stop crying.

“Sorry,” she said after a little while, pulling away from him, sniffling, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I got your shirt all dirty. I’m sorry.”

“Hey, n-no- it’s - it’s fine,” Evan told her. “You - it’s fine. Y-You’re okay. It’s only a shirt.”

Zoe nodded, but it didn’t look as though she believed him.

“It’s okay,” he repeated. “What you’re feeling it’s - it’s okay. C-Connor - he wasn’t the easiest, uh, the easiest guy to get along with s-so. It’s okay.”

“Yeah?” Zoe asked.

“Yeah,” Evan said, nodding, and it was only then that Zoe gave him another shy smile, before she pulled away from him completely.

“You know, Connor must have really liked you,” Zoe said, picking up her daisy chain by both ends. “If you were friends. He didn’t like a lot of people.”

It was like a twist of a knife Evan hadn’t even realised he was stabbed with.

“He - he must have done,” he said, but then Zoe was turning back to him, beaming, her chain of daisies now a loop.

“Here you are!” she said, standing up, walking over to him, and placing it over his head. “I made you a necklace! Do you like it?”

Evan took a moment to examine the delicate flowers hung around his neck. The stalks weren’t all even in length, and some of the petals were missing, but it was. Pretty. Cute. A little rough around the ages, but nice.

“I love it,” he said, and he smiled at her, as though everything -

As though everything was okay.

**Author's Note:**

> I just got the idea of an AU where Zoe was a lot younger than canon, then this happened. I'd like to return to this au at some point. Hopefully I will.
> 
> Please tell if I made any typos. Please.
> 
> I hope you've enjoyed this fic! If you have any questions, like the fic, have feedback or noticed any mistakes, post in the comments below, or at my tumblr [here](http://princedrewwrites.tumblr.com). I'm getting better at using it, I swear! Or, if you just liked the fic and don't want to say anything, just leave a kudos. There's no pressure either way.


End file.
